Day: October 3, 2023

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Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating incredibly short pulses of light that can capture processes inside atoms and molecules, in work which could advance medical diagnostics and electronics.

The Nobel academy said their studies had given humanity new tools for exploring the movement of electrons inside atoms, where changes occur in a few tenths of an attosecond – a unit so short that there are as many attoseconds in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe.

The prize, which was raised this year to 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million), is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“The ability to generate attosecond pulses of light has opened the door on a tiny, extremely tiny, time scale and it’s also opened the door to the world of electrons,” said Eva Olsson, member of the Nobel Prize in Physics Selection Committee.

It was once thought that these changes in electrons could not be seen, but the use of attosecond pulses has changed this, she added.

In an example of possible applications, the field held promise in areas such as a new in-vitro diagnostic technique to detect characteristic molecular traces of diseases in blood samples, the academy said.

Agostini and L’Hullier, both French-born though they work in the United States and Sweden respectively, were quickly congratulated by Sylvie Retailleau, France’s minister of Higher Education, who said they were a “great source of pride”.

L’Huillier, who received word she had won the prize in the middle of a lecture, told a news conference over the phone, “it is really a prestigious prize and I’m so happy to get it. It’s incredible.”

She works at Lund University in Sweden and Agostini is a professor at Ohio State University in the United States.

Hungarian-born Krausz is director at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany.

Physics is the second Nobel to be awarded this week after Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and U.S. colleague Drew Weissman won the medicine prize for making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines.

Created in the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901 with a few interruptions, becoming the arguably highest honour for scientists everywhere.

While the award for peace can hog the limelight, the physics prize has likewise often taken centre stage with winners such as Albert Einstein and awards for science that has fundamentally changed how we see the world.

Last year, Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the prize for work on quantum entanglement, where two particles are linked regardless of the space between them, something that unsettled Einstein himself who once referred to it as “spooky action at a distance”.

Announced on consecutive weekdays in early October, the physics prize announcement will be followed by ones for chemistry, literature, peace and economics, the latter a later addition to the original line-up.

($1 = 11.0129 Swedish crowns)

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(NewsNation) — The suspect in connection with the abduction of a 9-year-old girl during a family camping trip in upstate New York has been charged.

Craig Nelson Ross Jr., 47, was charged with first-degree kidnapping, the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to NewsNation on Tuesday.  

He was held without bail, according to the Times Union.

Charlotte Sena went missing over the weekend while riding her bike early Saturday evening at Moreau Lake State Park, a heavily wooded area some 35 miles north of Albany.

She was found alive and safe Monday.

Investigators were able to identify a fingerprint from a ransom note allegedly left by the suspect she identified as Ross Jr.

The ransom note was left inside the mailbox of the Sena family home around 4 a.m. Monday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said. A fingerprint on the ransom note matched Ross, who was in a database from a 1999 DUI case.

Police tracked  Ross to a double-wide trailer owned by his mother. They made entry into the camper around 6:30 p.m. and arrested Ross, who they said put up “some resistance” and suffered some minor injuries.

Sena was found safe inside the camper, which is about two miles from the Sena home, Hochul said.

Officials issued an Amber Alert on Sunday after an exhaustive search because, “It was quite possible that an abduction had taken place,” state police Lt. Colonel Richard Mazzone said at the time. About 400 search and rescue personnel actively searched a 46-linear mile area around the state park.

At least 29 Nigerien soldiers have been killed by jihadis near the country’s border with Mali, Niger’s junta said, as they struggle to end a spate of attacks.

More than 100 extremists used homemade explosives to target the West African nation’s security forces who were deployed at the border area on a clearance operation, Niger Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Salifou Mody said in a statement late Monday. It’s the second such attack against Nigerien soldiers in a week.

During the month after Niger’s military seized power, violence primarily linked to extremists soared by more than 40%, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Jihadi attacks targeting civilians quadrupled in August compared with the month before, and attacks against security forces spiked in the Tillaberi region, killing at least 40 soldiers, the project reported.

“This attack unfortunately caused the loss of several of our valiant soldiers,” Mody said Monday. “The provisional assessment of this attack is as follows: on the friendly side, 29 soldiers fell. … On the enemy side, several dozen terrorists were neutralized, fifteen motorcycles destroyed, a large quantity of weapons and ammunition seized.”

The junta, which took over after a July coup against Niger’s democratically elected government, declared a three-day national mourning period for the dead.

It repeated claims made in the past that “destabilization operations” were being carried out by “certain foreign powers with the complicity of Nigerien traitors,” without further details or proof.

Under growing pressure since the coup against Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, which the military said was carried out because of Niger’s security challenges, the junta promised that “all efforts will be made to guarantee the security of people and their property throughout the national territory.”

Niger has battled a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group for years. And the junta’s capacity to improve Niger’s security has increasingly been questioned recently as attacks have increased since mutinous soldiers toppled in July.

Niger was seen as one of the last democratic countries in Africa’s Sahel region that Western nations could partner with to beat back the jihadi insurgency in the vast expanse below the Sahara Desert. The United States, France and other European countries poured hundreds of millions of dollars into shoring up the Nigerien military.

Thai police on Tuesday said they had arrested a 14-year-old suspected gunman after a shooting at a luxury mall in the capital Bangkok that emergency services said had killed three people and injured four others.

The Metropolitan Police Detective Department said on its Facebook page that a 14-year-old suspected gunman had been arrested and was being questioned over the incident at the Siam Paragon mall.

Emergency services shared an image of a police officer apprehending and handcuffing an individual laying face down on the floor.

The Central Investigation Bureau had earlier posted a grainy image on its Facebook page of an individual they said was the gunman, dressed in khaki cargo pants and a baseball cap.

Unverified videos on social media showed scenes of chaos, with people, including children, running out of the doors of the mall while security guards ushered them out.

One of the videos showed people taking cover in a darkened room inside a restaurant, while live television showed long queues of traffic outside the mall in torrential rain.

Gun violence is not uncommon in Thailand. An ex-police officer killed 22 children in a nursery last year during a gun-and-knife attack, while in 2020 a soldier shot and killed at least 29 people and wounded 57 in a rampage that spanned four locations in and around the northeastern Thai city of Nakhon Ratchasima.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin expressed concern over the incident.

“I am aware of the shooting event at Siam Paragon and have ordered the police to investigate. I am most worried about public safety,” he posted on X social media.

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